Wall Street Action #1: Asphalt Snake, 11:00am and 11:00pmWall Street Action #2: Clothesline, 12:00pmWall Street Action #3: Almost Monochromatic, 3:50pm – 5:50pm, at sunset, one hour before to one hour after the sun touches the horizon.Wall Street Action #4: Rothko’s Pallet, 5:29am – 7:29am, at sunrise, one hour before to one hour after the sun touches the horizon.Wall Street Action #5: there was a rainbow in the middle of the night; there is a night in the middle of the rainbow, 11:59pm

November 6, Ongoing, various locations

Action #6: Book Circuit
Eleonora Fabião anonymously distributes the book Actions, which she co-edited with André Lepecki, throughout New York City—she leaves copies at gyms, bars, museums, supermarkets, banks, riverbanks, the subway, parks, parking lots, and disappeared bookstores.

November 7, Performa Hub, 12:30pm

Action #7: Book Circle
The week of encounters culminates in a roundtable conversation with the artist, featuring presentations by some of the book’s—Actions—contributing authors and performance scholars: Barbara Browning, Pablo Assumpção B. Costa, Adrian Heathfield, André Lepecki, and Felipe Ribeiro. Books are available to attendees for free.

Eleonora Fabião presents the Things That Must Be Done Series, a collection of new experimental group performances that unfold in the streets of New York City.

Putting her own intimate take on the history of Brazilian artists who use public arenas for performance, Fabião explores the street as a locale where social, economic, and political polarities have the potential to dissipate, and where art becomes a mode of desiring and the basis for new possibilities. Presented in three parts, the first phase of the Series takes place from November 1-5th as a kind of urban acupuncture, where a diverse group of intergenerational performers manipulate twelve-foot bamboo rods and color fields into transient arrangements. The actions explore geometry, abstraction, political potential, and vulnerability in capitalist societies through these radically precarious assemblages. On November 6th, Fabião anonymously distributes the book Actions, which she co-edited with André Lepecki, at bookstores, gyms, subways, and parks throughout the city.

This week of encounters culminates in a roundtable conversation at the Performa Hub on Nov 7 at 12:30pm, featuring presentations by the book’s contributing authors and performance scholars Barbara Browning, Pablo Assumpção B. Costa, Adrian Heathfield, André Lepecki, and Felipe Ribeiro. Books will be made available to attendees for free.

Curated by Adrienne Edwards.

Artist Statement

When I was invited to be an artist in residence at Performa 2015, I was highly encouraged by curator Adrienne Edwards to experiment, to continue developing in the streets of New York a process I had started very recently, in July 2015, in the streets of Rio de Janeiro. After many years performing solo or duo participatory urban actions, I started working with group performances. The first one – “in the middle of the night there was a rainbow; in the middle of the rainbow there is a night” – consisted in a long collective nocturne walk around the city while carrying 7 long bamboo rods (12 feet long each), 7 colored tungsten lamps tied to the tips and connected to a reverser by 150 feet of wire, which in turn, was connected to a truck battery pulled in a grocery cart. For Performa, we will continue experimenting with group actions, long bamboo lines, and color fields; we will continue relating geometry and organicity in the urban space; we will continue investigating the political potentiality of radically precarious assemblages. For that, the chosen location in New York City is the financial district, specifically Wall Street’s 8 blocks (from Broadway to South Street on the East River) and its adjacencies.

“Things That Must Be Done Series” is a sequence of 5 actions that must be done right now and persistently repeated.

“Things That Must Be Done Series” is an injection of strange matters and unusual flows in charged socio-political landscapes.

“Things That Must be Done Series” is urban acupuncture.

“Things That Must Be Done Series” is an explicit dispute of symbolic and imaginary spaces in the public arena.

“Things That Must be Done Series” is a type of glowing, iridescent, glittering poetical politics.

It is an experiment in collective body extensions, verticality, instability, vulnerability, and encounter.

It is performed by a group with multiple ages (20s, 30s, 40s, 50s, and 60s).

It is a search for other temporalities at capital’s capital (the actions are scheduled according to the sun’s movements, according to the sun’s approximations and withdrawals from the horizon).

TTMBDS is chronopolitics.

TTMDBS actions are structured according to very specific numerological arrangements.

TTMBDS is an experiment on becoming horizon. Horizons of possibilities. Collectively.

TTMBDS is a meditation on abstractionism and concreteness, witchcraft and art, capitalism and obscurantism, witchcraft and capitalism.

TTMBDS openly displays a fight between profit and gratuitousness, efficacy/efficiency/effectiveness and experimentation, capital orientation and political imagination, normative meaning and meaningful vitality.

TTMBDS performs the permanent formation and disformation of a collective performative body.

We want art to be moving 12 feet above our heads.

Image credit: Eleonora Fabião, Almost Nothing, Always Everything #1: 25 bricks , 2012 and 2013; photo by Felipe Ribeiro, courtesy of the artist. Eleonora Fabião, Almost Nothing, Always Everything #3: 9 bed sheets , 2012 and 2013; photo by Felipe Ribeiro, courtesy of the artist. Eleonora Fabião, Black Stain from Stains series, 2013; photo by Felipe Ribeiro, courtesy of the artist. Eleonora Fabião, Gouache Tagging, 2014; photo by Felipe Ribeiro, courtesy of the artist. Eleonora Fabião, In the middle of the night there was a rainbow; in the middle of the rainbow there is a night, 2015; photo by Jaime Acioli, courtesy of the artist. Eleonora Fabião, Brazil: The moment when the glass is full and it is no longer possible to swallow - our affair’s door is ajar, 2014 and 2015; photo by Felipe Ribeiro, courtesy of the artist. Eleonora Fabião, Precarious Series: To Touch Everything, 2011-2013; photo by Felipe Ribeiro, courtesy of the artist.

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Day #1 of Eleonora Fabião's experimental collective performance on Wall Street, which meditates on verticality, possibility, instability, and vulnerability, openly displaying the tensions between profit and gratuity, efficiency/ efficacy/ effectiveness and experimentation, and capital orientation and political imagination.

Day #2 of Eleonora Fabião's experimental collective performance on Wall Street, which meditates on verticality, possibility, instability, and vulnerability, openly displaying the tensions between profit and gratuity, efficiency/ efficacy/ effectiveness and experimentation, and capital orientation and political imagination.

Day #3 of Eleonora Fabião's experimental collective performance on Wall Street, which meditates on verticality, possibility, instability, and vulnerability, openly displaying the tensions between profit and gratuity, efficiency/ efficacy/ effectiveness and experimentation, and capital orientation and political imagination.

Day #4 of Eleonora Fabião's experimental collective performance on Wall Street, which meditates on verticality, possibility, instability, and vulnerability, openly displaying the tensions between profit and gratuity, efficiency/ efficacy/ effectiveness and experimentation, and capital orientation and political imagination.

Day #5 of Eleonora Fabião's experimental collective performance on Wall Street, which meditates on verticality, possibility, instability, and vulnerability, openly displaying the tensions between profit and gratuity, efficiency/ efficacy/ effectiveness and experimentation, and capital orientation and political imagination.

Day #6 of Eleonora Fabião's public interventions, where she anonymously distributes the book Actions, which she co-edited with André Lepecki, throughout New York City—she leaves copies at gyms, bars, museums, supermarkets, banks, riverbanks, the subway, parks, parking lots, and disappeared bookstores.

The week of encounters culminates in a roundtable conversation with the artist, featuring presentations by some of the book’s—Actions—contributing authors and performance scholars: Barbara Browning, Pablo Assumpção B. Costa, Adrian Heathfield, André Lepecki, and Felipe Ribeiro.